"To make himself sure of the actual course of a boat in such circumstances, and what possible incidents the adventure might have, Dickens hired a steamer for the day from Blackwall to Southend. Eight or nine friends, and three or four members of his family, were on board, and he seemed to have no care, the whole of that summer day (22nd of May, 1861), except to enjoy their enjoyment and entertain them with his own in shape of a thousand whims and fancies; but his sleepless observation was at work all the time, and nothing had escaped his keen vision on either side of the river." Scattered amongst the deserted reaches along the riverside may be seen such lonely farmhouses or taverns as suggest the aspect of the alehouse, "not unknown to smuggling adventurers"--for the "owling", that is, the smuggling industry had flourished for centuries in these parts--to which the fugitives were led by a twinkling light in the window up a little cobbled causeway, and where Dickens placed that amphibious creature, "as slimy and smeary as if he had been low-water mark too", who exhibited a bloated pair of shoes "as interesting relics that he had taken from the feet of a drowned seaman washed ashore". This type of the gruesome long-shoremen whom Dickens had encountered in his waterside rambles, as he collected the materials for _Great Expectations_, was afterwards elaborated in the Rogue Riderhood of _Our Mutual Friend_. "Swamp, mist, and mudbank"--if that is the dominant impression made by the view of the Thames off the Cooling marshes, it is not the only and the invariable impression. Even the bleak churchyard, at the foot of the cold, grey tower, is sometimes strewn by the light and flying gust "with beautiful shadows of clouds and trees". And from the Old Battery, where Joe would smoke his pipe with a far more sagacious air than anywhere else, as Pip strove to initiate him into the mysteries of reading and writing by the aid of a broken slate and a short piece of slate pencil, it is "pleasant and quiet" to watch the vessels standing out to sea with their white sails spread, and the light struck aslant, afar off, upon a cloud or sail or green hillside or silvery water line. [Illustration: COOLING CHURCH] To the west of Cooling Castle, beyond wide fields--turnips or cabbages--of the colour of dark-green jade, the Church of Cliffe, with its lichgate, standing out boldly from its ridge of chalk, overlooks a straggling village of old and weather-boarded houses. It would be into the road from Cliffe to Rochester, at a point about half a mile from Cooling, that Uncle Pumblechook's chaise-cart would debouch when he took Mrs. Joe to Rochester market "to assist him in buying such household stuffs and goods as required a woman's judgment".